Educational Media Reviews Online

Anyone sitting down to watch this film is likely to be waiting for an explanation of the title: what is the Red Road? Unfortunately, the filmmaker never explains this, so I had to look it up myself. On the website Traditional Native Healing, I found this definition: The Red Road or the Red Path is the Native spiritual path … It means finding a balance between and attending to our four sides: spiritual, physical, mental and emotional … Its opposite would be the path of self-destruction, aka the Black Road.

Now, the title makes perfect sense since this is a film about Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest who are overcoming their addictions to drugs or alcohol by returning to their spiritual roots. They are turning away from the Black Road by embracing the music, crafts, and traditions of their culture.

The film consists of interviews with a number of recovering addicts as well as the staff at a treatment center that incorporates various Native American traditions into their programs. Unfortunately, the filmmaker seems to assume that everyone watching is an expert in Native American culture and lets many questions go unanswered. For instance, the participants talk about the importance of joining a “canoe family” but no one explains what that is.

This film would have benefited greatly from having a narrator who could explain some of this background information. You do not even realize that you are looking at two different treatment centers unless you hang on through the final credits.

While this traditional healing is an interesting approach to the problem, by the end of the film, I felt that I was missing too much information to truly appreciate it.

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